Gaming News Roundup – Mar 13

Nintendo Direct

A full-on Direct happened this past week with some wonderful surprises. Let’s run through what was shown:

Splatoon 2 Gets Single-Player DLC

Splatoon enthusiasts are going to be delighted to know that some new treats are coming. A new character called Agent 8 stars in the new story, and she’s apparently lost her memory. It’s important to note that she isn’t an inkling, which is what you’d normally play as in Splatoon 2, she’s an octoling. You can see the trailer for the Octo Expansion here. It’ll be available this summer at $19.99.

Besides the paid DLC, there will also be a big update in April that will include a ton of new gear, 3 new maps, and what will be the highest rank in the game, rank X.

Luigi’s Mansion On 3DS

Luigi’s Mansion, which was a classic to many, is getting remade for the 3DS. If you missed out on the GameCube release, be sure to pick it up if you own a 3DS because this is definitely one of the more unique and fun adaptations of the Mario games. Check out the trailer for it here.

Crash Comes To The Switch (and other platforms too)

For the first time ever, the main series Crash Bandicoot games will be playable on a Nintendo platform. The N. Sane Trilogy collection is going multi-platform, meaning you’ll be able to “not remember this being so hard” on the Switch, Xbox One, PS4, and Steam. Check out the trailer for it here and be sure to pick up your little box of nostalgia July 10th this year.

Mario Tennis Aces, Babyyyyyy!

Mario Tennis Aces is my favorite sports anime.

The most charming and stylish tennis game to date got shown off at the Direct as well. It features a bunch of great improvements to the series such as the Zone Shot, which allows the player to scope out where they want the ball to hit. Check out the Direct showcase here and notice the Chain Chomp living his dreams of becoming a tennis star. If you’re on the fence about picking this up, there will be a pre-launch tournament for you to try out.

A New Smash Bros. Approaches

You can finally throw away your Wii U for good. A new Super Smash Bros. will be coming to the Switch this year! We’re unsure if it’s an updated port or an all-new game, but it’s very exciting news nonetheless. Apparently the inklings from Splatoon will be playable in it, possibly being another shooter type character. Another thing to take note of in the trailer is that it appears that Link is wearing some Breath of the Wild gear when the camera zooms on him. This could mean that his BotW attire could be replacing the classic green tunic in the Smash games, but we’ll see. You can check out the trailer for yourself here.

A great Direct with a lot for Switch players to look forward to. Besides this, though, we did have a good bit of news about some other games.

Valve Making Games Again

It looks like besides maintaining the Steam store, Valve will be making games again. At a recent event where Valve previewed a DOTA spin-off card game called Artifact, Gabe Newell took the time to say, “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that’s sort of good news. Valve’s going to start shipping games again.”

What we do know about this is that they are going to start working on 7 new games, 3 of which are VR.

This is pretty awesome news since, as I’m sure you all know, they haven’t really published anything since 2011’s Portal 2.

Division 2 Announced

The first Division wasn’t met with the warmest of embraces on its initial launch. It was buggy, the map didn’t include parts of the city that were promised, the enemies were bullet sponges, the final boss is a helicopter, it just wasn’t the best of times. Also, how was its story based around a virus epidemic, but it never showed a single sick person? As time went by, Ubisoft did put in a lot of work to improve it, but a large portion of the playerbase had already gone. The Division 2 has just been announced and while we didn’t get much information about it, we can only hope that Ubisoft learned a lot the first time around. We’ll see at E3, where they’ll be revealing more.

Your Yearly COD Fix Continues

A new Call of Duty is coming this year. I bet you didn’t expect that. It’s going to be the fourth installment of the Black Ops series. (The Roman numeral is actually IV, not IIII, but it’s their logo so whatever.) We didn’t get much besides the teaser, but it’ll be out on October 12th. The big reveal will be on May 17th, so watch out for that.

Days Gone Delayed

If you haven’t gotten your zombie fix this year, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. Sony exclusive Days Gone has been pushed back to 2019. Not much information has been given besides that, but I’m sure you still have plenty of zombie material to hold you over until then.

Fortnite Mobile

A mobile version of surprise hit Fortnite is on its way. Not only will you be able to play it on the go on your iOS and Android, but you’ll also be cross-playing with players on the PC, Xbox, and PS4, which is amazing. There still won’t be cross-play between Xbox and PlayStation because Sony doesn’t want to, but this is still really cool. Fortnite is really making big moves out here. Fortnite even surpassed Minecraft in YouTube searches this week, which is crazy to me.

State of Decay 2 Release Date

Hey look, a zombie game.

This week we got the release date for State of Decay 2, which will be May 22nd. There was also a good chunk of gameplay released that’ll give you a good luck at the improvements made for this iteration, you can find that here. The original was praised by many and I imagine State of Decay 2 will get a similar reception.

H1Z1 Goes Free-To-Play

The predecessor to PUBG and basically all of these battle royale games has finally gone free-to-play. We’ve known that H1Z1 had plans to do so for a while now, so if you haven’t gotten the chance to play it, now’s the time. It’s likely not going to be able to compete with PUBG and Fortnite, but it’s another option at the very least.

Far Cry 5 Arcade Mode

A nice surprise will meet players who pick up this iteration of Far Cry. A very robust arcade mode/map editor is one of the new modes you can expect in the game. The map editor is very in-depth, even containing assets from Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Assassin’s Creed. You can play these community-created maps solo, co-op, or PvP, similar to how the community-created maps work in something like GTA Online. You can see the trailer for it here, but I urge you to watch this video by The Black Hokage, who was very impressed by the mode.

That’s the news for this week, an incredibly busy week for sure. Have you thrown out your Wii U since Smash on Switch was announced? Excited to see what Valve will be making in the future? Let us know below! If you missed last week’s roundup, you can get caught up here. If you’re wondering why I haven’t reported about Trump talking about video games, it’s because I think it’s very stupid. I don’t really want to dedicate too much time and energy into this run of scare tactics to demonize video games. I don’t have the time to link every study that’s debunked this airheaded theory. Video games are sold worldwide, yet shootings happen here more than anywhere else. Stop trying to find a scapegoat and research the actual problem.